so we thought we'd do a bit of a video on 3d printing and what we use it for how we use it um
it's a bit of a crazy technology really because it seems like 10 years ago it was something that was
you know kind of like a really exotic thing or like really high-end technology and now you can
buy a 3d printer for like 100 quid and it's so useful for so many things because of the speed
and the the cost um you know like a really good hobby printer you know three four hundred pounds
and super reliable so using it for like business use that's what you need you know you need speed
and reliability so some of the things we use it for we're trying to use it for loads of things now
but it's mainly prototyping parts so prototyping flanges is a big one so we'll we'd like draw a
flange off a downpipe like this one so if we want to make a d-cap version of this down pipe
this is off an astra k 1.4 turbo if we wanted to um re-manufacture this downpipe before what
we would have had to do would be draw it i could do a cab drawing just off measurements
that we take off of the part and then we would send that away
and have like a rapid prototype done of some kind so usually from like a cheaper material
lathe machined from abs or something like that and then we would get that back try it on our jig
um see if it fit if it did great we can then get them machined in stainless steel whatever material
um if it doesn't you don't have to have adjustments made
and then the the beauty of the 3d printing is we can actually do all that kind of check
process in-house so we can we can take that drawing that we've done
print one in like hours sometimes some stuff you know you can print some stuff in like an hour
um check it on the jig check it looks like what we want you know it did are there any changes that
we could make to it that would make manufacturing the downpipe cheaper or easier or um you know just
better and then we can kind of make those changes and then make a second revision and we can we can
keep going backwards and forwards just in house without having to wait days between revisions
and then once we've got that 3d prototype that plastic prototype that we know works in our jig
we can send our file away to the machinists and then they can machine a batch of flanges to our
exact dimensional tolerances and we know that when we receive them that we're gonna they're gonna fit
on our jig no problem so it just takes out any of the error or any of the just time-consumingness
of you know prototyping parts because you know one of my favorite things is prototyping new products
and figuring out how we're going to make new things and if it takes forever it's just it's just
frustrating so you know now we're at a point where we can kind of 3d print almost a full down pipe
off of our um you know drawings and then kind of print it check it and and see if it works
so yeah i thought we'd just show you how we would do a flange really something simple
okay so i have now created
the outside profile and now i just need to put a big hole in the middle of it for the actual
gas to pass through so i've kind of cut a hole in there now which is 76.2 millimeters or 76.5
because you know it allows us to have a little bit of room for play
but that is now kind of ready to test print pretty much i'm just going to put a little bit of a
fill it on there so it's nice and smooth actually i'll use a chamfer on that edge
you want to use like nice chamfers and uh radiuses on things it looks nicer and also we don't really
want any kind of 90 degree angles or any kind of sharp angles that have been cut with the lathe
because it's not normally an issue on like down pipes but on turbo phalanges
specifically if you've got like 90 degree angles that come together
that can be an area where a crack can begin to form as uh you know they go through lots
of heat cycles so yeah that's basically ready to print now just before i print one to start with
i'll normally just do like a section analysis so i'll just look at it kind of cut in half
just to make sure it looks you know like what we want so that looks correct so i've got cura open
you just open it up open up your files i'll go to desktop which is where it was and i called it ep1
so it should come up there we go ep1 comes up in the wrong orientation it just comes up in
the orientation that you've kind of drawn it in so i'm just going to rotate that 90 degrees
i don't need any supports or anything like that to create this um wall thickness i'll change that to
one millimeter because i just want i get i just want to print it really quickly at this point
i don't want to waste loads of time um you know wasting material or anything like that i'm still
giving me a one hour 50 print time so i'm pretty sure i can bring that down by slimming it all down
a little bit yes i've got that down to 56 minutes now i can print that in within an hour i'll have a
plastic prototype from this cat
to actually try on to the jig that we've made so yeah just case printing now
so now that we've got our file on the memory card got the memory card in the printer so i
can just print that and the print is gonna heat up and start printing it
i'm just looking for quick fast prototypes really and that's what this is perfect for so yeah it's
gonna it's heating up the bed it's now heating up the nozzle and as soon as the nozzle's at the
temperature it'll start printing so we've got the printed part off the print bed now
um looks good printed okay so we can check to see if it fits
and it seems to fit on there nice and tight and okay which is good that's what we want
um the 3d printed parts always tend to be a little bit smaller than what the machined part would be
so as long as we're 100 sure that all the critical dimensions are inputted into
the cad program correctly and the 3d part fits then we know that the stainless steel version is
is going to be the same so we've got the stainless steel version of um you know the 3d printed part
and that fits onto our jig perfectly and then this is what it gets turned into so this is the astra k
down pipe not quite finished on this batch but that's how the flanges and and how it works and
yeah that's going from a 3d printed prototype to a full size full scale working model you